Melania Trump pushes for ‘Take It Down Act’
Melania Trump spoke out in favor of legislation that would criminalize the publication of nonconsensual deepfake sexual images.
A number of documents with instructions on how to create AI deepfake sex images were posted to Indiana’s state government website and have been discoverable through Google searches for nearly two weeks.
A Google search earlier in the afternoon of Dec. 2 showed PDF documents indexed under the web address for the Indiana Department of Health, advertising apps and tools such as “Best no filter NSFW generator” ― an acronym for “not safe for work” ― that, for example, can generate images that artificially removes a person’s clothes.
Those documents have since been taken down.
Greta Sanderson, chief communications officer for IDOH, said the agency discovered a “significant surge in bot activity” on Nov. 19 on three of IDOH’s web applications that the public can access. This wasn’t a hack, she said.
“IDOH worked with the Indiana Office of Technology to successfully contain the incident and no data were impacted,” she said. “As a result, most of the files involved have been already been deleted, but we are still working through the process of also eliminating them from Google searches.”
She said the incidents are also not related to web-service provider Granicus, which has had a few other government-agency customers who have dealt with the unwanted uploading of illicit content.
In those cases, Granicus explained to Kansas station KWCH, outside actors used government web portals meant to solicit resident feedback and uploaded the content through public form submissions. Then, Google indexed these attachments in its search results.
“While the above feature was intended by governments to provide transparency and good customer service, it has been abused in these instances,” the company wrote in a statement.
As of state legislation passed in 2024, creating or distributing non-consensual pornographic deepfakes is a misdemeanor offense in Indiana. President Donald Trump also signed a federal law in May making the publication of so-called “revenge porn” online or on social media punishible by prison time.
This wouldn’t be the state’s first brush with an AI deepfake scandal. In August, allegations surfaced that staffers in the Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s office watched a deepfake video portraying a state lawmaker’s wife topless. A Marion County grand jury has investigated the alleged incident.
Contact IndyStar Statehouse reporter Kayla Dwyer at kdwyer@indystar.com or follow her on X @kayla_dwyer17.
